Ashes and Wine
by Lynyrd Lionheart
Summary: She is lost and confused and in love but unable to stop imagining the blood on her hands, and somehow in those nightmares the stab wounds become bullet holes, and he's always the one holding the gun. Kalagang.


**AN: Am I writing for yet another Fandom? Why yes I am. I just finished this show, and it currently owns my life, so of course I had to write for it.**

 **Ashes and Wine**

In the end, she goes to the temple and kneels, and then the tears fall.

Perhaps it isn't the safest place for her to be; not after Manendra, or the encounter when Will saved her. But Kala has so few places where she can find comfort, and right now she needs her faith.

Will and Riley are safe. They _all_ are safe.

Wolfgang is… Wolfgang is…

"Where is this place?"

It's not Wolfgang. It's Sun, with her serious eyes, and when Kala looks up at her, and she knows her own eyes sparkle with the tears that have fallen, Sun simply looks at her for a moment, before she comes to sit next to her and looks up at the statue of Ganesh.

"It's a temple," Kala replies, and if it had been anyone else, she might have thought Sun's look was exasperated. She feels a flush rise on her cheeks, because it was a foolish answer, but she hadn't known what else to say. "It's _my_ temple."

They both turn back to Ganesh, and Kala stares at the God she's turned to so many times, and sends out a prayer for help, for guidance. She does it silently, but the way Sun fidgets reminds her that doing such things silently is silly, when your mind no longer belongs only to you.

"Do you ever get answers?" Sun asks.

"I believe…" Kala hesitates, wondering if all of this will seem so… _foolish_ to Sun, who always seems to look at the world so coolly, so logically.

 _I push all of it into my fist… and I fight for it._

Sun simply looks at her, and Kala is reminded that for all that she shows such a serious face to the rest of the world, Sun feels deeply and passionately. Even now, she can feel it simmering just below the Korean woman's surface, and suddenly it's easier to speak.

"I believe there is a purpose in everything we do. That Ganesh guides us down the path we are meant to take," Kala looks at the statue of her God, and she clasps her hands together, her knuckles going white. "But I also believe that I can't be a passive spectator to my own life. That while Ganesh guides me… I must also take steps down the path he has guided me _to_. I must… I must fight for it. But the fight is difficult."

"You worry about disappointing your family," Sun remarks. "I understand that."

They cannot read each other's every thought, but it is close, and Kala gets the impression of Sun's family, of a brother that was wild and reckless and went too far, of a father that was cold and distant, and in the end lost. And over it all, the echo of a promise that Sun has never been able to bring herself to break.

"But in the end, Kala, we must make our own destiny, no matter what Gods and family might tell us."

They are words to say good-bye on, but for some reason Sun hesitates and remains. She looks around and closes her eyes, and breathes in deeply.

"It is peaceful here," she remarks at last, and Kala watches as she stretches her legs and gets to her feet. "We all know what he was feeling… when he did what he did. But in the end, Wolfgang should not dictate your fate either."

And then Sun is gone, and Kala is left to look at her God. She considers sending up another prayer for guidance… but then again, hadn't Ganesh already answered that prayer.

 _We must make our destiny…_

SENSE8

In the end, her engagement to Rajan ends with surprisingly little fanfare.

"Is it because of my father?"

"No."

She meets his gaze steadily, and hopes that he will see the words she does not wish to speak in her eyes. She doesn't want to hurt Rajan anymore than she already has; he is a good man. In another lifetime, maybe she would have found it in herself to love him. But this is not another life.

It is hers, and she loves a man she does not understand, and won't enter into a marriage with another simply because she is afraid of being a disappointment.

Rajan lets her leave after that, and she regrets that there will be no friendship between them after all of this, but she has caused him enough pain, and she understands why he does not give her those words of absolution.

Her family is surprised, of course, and it is her father's disappointment that she fears the most.

"I do not understand," he tells her, when he finds her on the roof – it's where she's always gone to hide from the world, because it made her feel as though she could reach out and touch the stars. Now it feels as though that sky is falling in on her, and each shattered piece bares Wolfgang's name, because she can't forget it.

She can't forget watching him put bullets into a man with a ruthless gaze and ice cold words.

 _My father was a monster, and so are you. And so am I._

He had felt such… _hatred_. Kala had never imagined hatred like that before, and until that moment, when she could feel everything that he was feeling, she had never thought she would. But he had felt it, and _always_ felt it, and there was something monstrous in that.

She thinks of fellow worshippers stabbing Manendra over and over until his front was thick with blood, and remembers how it stained her hands and closed and how she begged an empty world for help.

Wolfgang was capable of monstrosity, but he was not a monster.

Because monsters couldn't love… and despite everything, he loved _her_. She felt it with the same certainty she always felt when she knelt before Ganesh and believed that he would guide her true.

"I do not love him," she says to her father at last. She looks at him, and she feels tears in her eyes, because even more than Rajan, she had dreaded _this_. "I tried, but I could not."

"Why did you not _tell_ me?" her father asks, and there is such great sadness in his eyes, that it breaks Kala's heart.

"I didn't want to disappoint you, Papa."

He steps forward and rests a hand on her cheek and presses a warm kiss to her forehead. She closes her eyes and basks in the feel and the scent of him, and how comforting it is, even when she's a grown woman who no longer needs her father's protection.

"The only thing that would disappoint me, is if you walked a path you did not choose, merely because you wished me to be happy."

Her body is wracked with a sob at his words, and all the tears and worry that has been building within her comes rushing out. He hugs her tightly and makes soothing noises, and lets her soak is clothing with her tears. When they finally stop, it feels as though she can breathe for the first time since she accepted Rajan's proposal.

"I love you, Papa."

"And I you, Kala."

SENSE8

The following weeks are peaceful. Riley and Will are still on the run, but Riley keeps them all updated. Will can't know anything, not with Whispers able to connect to him, but the rest of them do, and they work together in small ways to keep the pair safe. Nomi is the one that does most of the work, of course. Right now they need a hacker, not a chemist, so Kala waits with baited breath until her assistance is needed.

She visits Sun, often, and wishes she could help the other woman.

"There must be some way-"

"Have you spoken to Wolfgang?"

Sun's question makes Kala break off and look away. She paces the tiny cell, dragging her fingers across the wall. Just because she knows he is not a monster, doesn't mean she can forget the look in his eyes, or the way he told her – _practically ordered her_ \- to marry Rajan. Every time she thinks of speaking to him, she remembers bullets shot from a gun, and it makes her thinks of stab wounds to the stomach, and she wants to be ill.

Only once was she pulled into his world, to see him at his friend's bedside. He had looked up at her, and she had looked back, and they had said nothing.

She hadn't known the words… because the only thing she could think to say was _I love you_ , but then she would remember blood on her hands, and it became a vicious cycle.

"I helped Capheus to kill many men," Sun remarks, and Kala looks at her sharply. Sun isn't looking back, and her voice is almost conversational. "With a sword. I was filled with such anger. I couldn't take that anger out on my brother, so I took it out on men I had never met before."

"You saved his life," Kala replies, because she can remember that day, can remember the violence, and though she hadn't been there, it had echoed in her bones.

"Did I?" Sun asks. "Or did I just need to kill someone to calm my anger? We are all capable of great and terrible things, Kala."

"I know," Kala whispers, and she turns to the wall once more. There is a blood stain, and she rests her knuckles against it, imagining Sun punching this very spot until her knuckles bled and stained the cement. "Perhaps that's what I'm afraid of. That there are terrible things in me as well, and what if he brings them out?"

"Perhaps he will," Sun agrees. "Or perhaps you will bring out the great in him. But right now, you are both bleeding" – she hesitates, and Kala simply waits, because Sun seems to always say what she needs to hear – "even if you choose to walk away, if one of us bleeds, we all bleed. You need to mend this somehow."

It's the truth, of course. She can feel Wolfgang's pain even in a prison in Korea, and echoes her own, until the reverberations spread so wide that it's a wonder the others haven't broken beneath the weight of the emotions they are forced to share.

She tells herself that's the reason she goes to him, but really it's because she can't stay away.

"Are you married?"

They are in his apartment, and he is staring at the television with eyes that don't see. He doesn't look at her when he asks the question, nor when she sits carefully on the edge of the couch next to him.

"You know the answer to that."

"I've avoided it. I didn't want to see…" his gaze darts to her briefly, and then away once more. "I know you make a beautiful bride, but I didn't want to see it."

"I called it off."

"Oh."

They lapse into silence once more, sitting awkwardly, looking at the screen. Kala wishes she had Sun's strength, or Nomi's courage, or Capheus' ability to see the good in everything. Even Lito's ability to bullshit through this meeting would be helpful at the same time.

But all she is, is Kala. Lost and confused and in love but unable to stop imaging the blood on her hands, and somehow in those nightmares the stab wounds become bullet holes, and he's always the one holding the gun.

"I never wanted it to touch you," he says, and his voice sounds pained. He leans forward, elbows on knees, and holds his head. "Out of everyone… you were the last I wanted it to touch."

"But it did," Kala replies.

"But it did," he agrees.

Silence reigns once more, until it's so loud she thinks she might go insane.

"I don't know what to do" – it feels as though the words are ripped from her, but it feels so _good_ to say them – "I pray, but I receive no guidance. Because you haunt my nightmares, but when I'm here, in front of you? All I remember is how you kissed me good-bye, and how it terrified me, that I might never see you again."

As if those words unleash something in him, Wolfgang moves, and Kala is in his arms. His lips seal over hers in a kiss that brands her to her very bones. It's a haunting realization, to know that she could kiss a hundred other men, but she would always belong to this one. She closes her eyes and kisses him back, and until this kiss she hadn't realized desperation had a taste.

"I want to forget it," she whispers against his lips when they have to breathe. "I want to forget it and hold onto you. Can you make me forget it?"

He doesn't say anything, just kisses her again. When her hands go to the bottom of his shirt, he lets her push it up over his head. She runs her hands over his chest, the muscles of his stomach, and when his hands rest on the skin beneath her shirt, and then push it up over her head, she swears they leave fire in their wake.

When she had ended things with Rajan, it hadn't been because of Wolfgang. But now that she's in his arms, and their clothes are being discarded, she knows that it's a blessing she made that choice. Because she doesn't think that even a promise to another man could have stopped this, could have made _her_ stop this. And when he kisses her naked skin, and his fingers delve into moist heat, all thoughts of any other man disappear.

There is only Wolfgang – will only ever _be_ Wolfgang.

It's rougher than he would have liked. She can feel that – if they ever got here, he'd wanted it to be slow and tender and all those things you read about in romance novels. But Kala thinks this suits him better. He isn't a tender man, she knows this – _my father was a monster, and so are you. And so am I_ – but at the same time it doesn't hurt. Perhaps it's not tender, but his touch is gentle, and she feels his pleasure along with her own, and she feels his love along with her own, too.

She wonders, briefly, if the others feel it as well.

But then he hits her _right there_ , and all thoughts of the others go flying away. There is only her and Wolfgang, and she buries her fingers in his hair and kisses him with all the fierce passion she can muster.

And when they both reach that peak and then, later, come down from it, she lies in his arms, and he traces patterns on her skin with his fingertips.

"I can't make you forget," he tells her, even as he presses a kiss to her shoulder.

"I know," Kala says, and she thinks she might cry. Because right now there is only her and Wolfgang, but she is not really here, and when she returns to her room – alone and cold – all there will be is nightmares and blood on her hands.

"Where do we go from here?"

She turns in his arms and pulls him in for another kiss.

"We survive," she murmurs against his lips. "We survive and we… _adapt_."

He kisses her again, fiercely –

And then she opens her eyes, and she's in her room and there's a knocking on the door.

"Kala, are you up? I thought I heard noises?"

"I will be out in a moment."

She sits in her bed, and when she closes her eyes, she swears she can smell him, even though she knows it's just her mind being fanciful, because he's not there. It's just her, cold and alone and missing him, and already she can feel the blood creeping up on her again.

She buries her face in her hands and cries, and wishes he were there to wrap her in his arms and make her forget again.

 **AN: Let me know what you think!**


End file.
